IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Another one bites the dust: Oregon denies proposed coal export facility; It's official: July 2014 was the 4th hottest July on record; Fracking industry illegally using diesel fuel, threatening underground water supplies; PLUS: New report finds Republican officials DO accept climate change, they're just too cowardly to admit it publicly... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Washington Posts'"The Fix" blog describes Rep. Justin Amash's (R-MI) victory speech after his primary election on Tuesday as "absolutely amazing", noting that "Politicians who win campaigns, no matter how dirty, will almost always kiss and make up with their political opponents in their election-night speeches."

Amash did no such thing, as his remarks highlighted, once again, the growing, deep and bitter divide running straight through the Republican Party.

In particular, Amash targeted Michigan's former Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra, a long-time Chamber-backed candidate himself, now a Chamber-funded political lobbyist and supporter of Amash's Republican opponent Brian Ellis. "I want to say to lobbyist Pete Hoekstra," Amash told the crowd, underscoring the L-word to much applause, "you are a disgrace. And I'm glad we could hand you one more loss before you fade into total obscurity and irrelevance."

Ouch. As "The Fix" notes, "Hoekstra lost the state's 2012 Senate race --- and in the 2010 gubernatorial primary."

And then Amash zeroed in on his direct opponent, businessman Ellis: "You owe my family and this community an apology for your disgusting, despicable smear campaign. You had the audacity to try and call me today after running a campaign that was called the nastiest in the country. I ran for office to stop people like you. To stop people who were more interested in themselves than in doing what's best for their district."

The Ellis campaign ran an ad earlier this summer, citing Amash's support for shutting down the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay (just as both George W. Bush and John McCain once supported) and his attempt to stop warrantless spying on Americans (a bill that narrowly failed with a bi-partisan 205 to 217 vote, which included 94 votes from fellow Republicans).

The Ellis ad referred to Amash, who is an Arab-American, as "Al Qaeda's best friend in Congress."

His blistering remarks about Hoekstra and Ellisn come just after the 3 minute mark in the video below...

Michele Bachmann may be on her way out. And Sarah Palin cut and run long ago. But make way for Republican state Rep. Lenar Whitney, who is now running for an open Congressional seat from Louisiana.

She cites Bachmann "as a political role model" and proudly accepts the monicker of "Palin of the South", according to Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, who wrote about her at Washington Post this week.

"I've personally interviewed over 300 congressional candidates over the course of seven years, both to get to know them and evaluate their chances of winning" he writes. "But never have I met any candidate quite as frightening or fact-averse as Louisiana state Rep. Lenar Whitney, 55, who visited my office last Wednesday."

Wasserman describes how she eventually "fled the room", after he'd asked her "repeatedly for the source of her claim that the earth is getting colder", as seen --- along with much more --- in the remarkable video below. He says "she froze and was unable to cite a single scientist, journal or news source to back up her beliefs."

Not surprising, given that her claims are all bullshit, until you see the confidence with which she presents that bullshit in the campaign video below. Get a load --- and I do mean load --- of this...

We're getting ready to hit the road, so no time at the moment to debunk each of her ridiculous --- and long ago debunked everywhere else --- assertions. Even the frequently absurd PolitiFact judged the claims in her otherwise hilarious video to be "Pants on Fire".

But the video seems worth highlighting here, nonetheless, if only so that folks can know who may become the next Congressmember from Louisiana's 6th district, and so we all might further appreciate just how far off the rails of reality the Republican Party has now gone, that a) this woman is even a viable candidate for U.S. Congress from any party and b) she's actually already been elected to something beyond Dog Catcher by voters in the state of Louisiana!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 20m gallon water main break, amid worst drought in CA history, exposes threat of decrepit U.S. water infrastructure; Record wildfires depleting firefighting budgets; Republicans fiddle while the West burns; New report finds (again) climate change is really, really expensive; PLUS: Warming oceans bring flesh-eating bacteria to Florida... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

The U.S. House has finally found something they can agree on. They want President Obama to remove U.S. troops from Iraq.

In an overwhelming bi-partisan vote on Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a Concurrent Resolution [PDF], which, pursuant to Section 5(c) of the War Powers Act, directs "the President to remove United States Armed Forces, other than Armed Forces required to protect United States diplomatic facilities and personnel from Iraq" within 30 days, unless it is unsafe to do so.

...at any time that United States Armed Forces are engaged in hostilities outside the territory of the United States, its possessions and territories without a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization, such forces shall be removed by the President if the Congress so directs by concurrent resolution.

Last month, the President authorized up to 300 more U.S. troops to be sent to Iraq as military advisers in the wake of the takeover of a number of Iraqi cities by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). That brought the total of U.S. troops in the nation to more than 800.

Win Without War, a national coalition of anti-war organizations, released a statement describing today's vote as "a strong message to President Obama that there is no authorization for any escalation of US military involvement in Iraq."

"After nearly 13 years of trying to solve such challenges militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan, with little success, the American people simply do not support another war in the Middle East," the group said in their statement. "Instead, we hope today's clear message against military escalation will encourage the President to double down on diplomatic efforts and a robust humanitarian response."

While the House Resolution is directed to the President, it also represents a stinging rebuke to GOP war hawk Senators like John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC). Earlier this month the pair criticized the President for refusing to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government after he came to office, which would have "kept U.S. troops there", following George W. Bush's Status of Forces Agreement struck with Iraq in 2008. That agreement called for the removal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2011.

The vote on Friday is believed to be largely symbolic, however, as it would require similar passage in the U.S. Senate, where Senators like McCain and Graham would likely seek to block a vote on the matter. Then, again, matters could lead to a "politics-make-strange-bedfellows" moment if Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) were to come together in support of the Concurrent Resolution.

Just getting back on the grid today after a few days off of it, so getting caught up with much, including today's release of the legal memo [PDF] detailing the Obama Administration's claim of legal authority for the 2011 targeted drone killing of U.S. citizen and alleged terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen.

(Three other U.S. citizens were also killed in drone strikes abroad, including al-Awlaki's 16-year old son one month after his father, though the Administration contends those killings were incidental deaths during strikes targeting others...as if that makes them less awful somehow? In any event...)

As the Washington Post notes, portions of the document are redacted, including "paragraphs that presumably explained why the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel determined that killing Awlaki in a drone strike would not violate the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees due process to U.S. citizens accused of crimes."

The paper adds, however, that "the memo provides previously unknown details about the reasoning behind one of the most controversial counterterrorism operations carried out by the U.S. government since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."

But what caught my eye in particular today, was the Congressional Progressive Caucus' somewhat snarky, if very clever, promotion of their press release in response to the released (and redacted) memo, which Roll Call's Steven Dennis describes as "Progressive Caucus Trolls Obama on Drone Memo"...

P.S. We've been asking of late, but few have answered the call. Please consider supporting The BRAD BLOG with a one-time donation or a monthly sustaining donation. Everything that we do here --- including our survival and our independence and much of the exclusive reporting offered for free above --- depends on your support to help us continue. It's getting very difficult to do so. So please consider helping us out if you can afford it. Every bit really helps!

The political world exploded tonight with the stunning reported defeat of Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to little-known "Tea Party" candidate Dave Brat.

Cantor's loss was so unexpected that Democrats didn't even bother to nominate anyone to run in Virginia's 7th Congressional District until last night, reportedly during a conference call, when they decided to put up a professor named Jack Trammell (from the same Randolph-Macon College where Brat works) as their nominee, just before today's deadline.

So, there's more than enough speculative analysis complete guess work out there for you elsewhere about what all of this portends, from the same political pundits and geniuses and well-sourced insiders who had no clue that Cantor was about to become famous as the first sitting House Majority Leader to lose in a primary race since either 1899 or...forever, depending on who you listen to.

But, pretty much just as soon as it appeared that Cantor was about to be announced the "loser" in a blowout of an election late today, questions started coming in to us, via Twitter and elsewhere, with concerns about the integrity of the reported results and if there could have been any chicanery behind them...

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): How Solar Will Destroy Utilities in 5 Easy Steps; President of Kiribati: "It's too late for us"; Amazon tribal chief: the white man is destroying everything; War on Coal already happened - mining industry won and miners lost; FAA oks first drones on US soil - for BP; Supreme Court rules against homeowners in Camp Lejeune water contamination; Duke Energy signs deals for Dan River spill cleanup; Illinois bans plastic microbeads in personal care products due to water pollution ... PLUS: 7 reasons to be more optimistic about climate change than Ezra Klein ... and much, MUCH more! ...

We touched on this a bit in yesterday's Green News Report, but this new "I'm not a scientist" tactic now emerging from Republicans, as played most recently by Speaker John Boehner, is noteworthy enough --- and cowardly enough...and purposely deceptive enough --- to look at just a bit closer.

It's a fairly clever new ruse to avoid what folks like Boehner know to be absolutely true, but which, for a number of reasons, they're not allowed to say outloud anymore.

It's that time of year again. Memorial Day weekend. When politicians of all parties love to pretend they care about the men and women they send away to fight and die for wars of political expediency, only to pretty much completely ignore them for the rest of their lives once they come back home.

The latest "outrage" about the various failings of the Veterans Administration is just more evidence of that. The Obama administration has known about many of the problems for years, but hasn't done nearly enough to fix them. Now that the issues have found their way into the media again, the Republicans, who've spent years denying veterans benefits and refusing to fund the VA at levels adequate to support their much-beloved wars-without-end, are pretending to be upset about it all --- now that they believe they can use it to hurt their real enemy, this particular President of the United States.

And that's where The Daily Show's Jon Stewart jumped back in to the matter last week, pointing out that the latest hypocrisy is, in fact, not particularly new for the U.S., not by a long shot.

Our friend Tom Courbat of Riverside, CA (decidedly not to be confused with Pennsylvania's democracy and freedom hating Gov. Tom Corbett) --- a Vietnam-era Agent Orange and Multiple Myeloma Surviving veteran, as well as great homefront hero of Democracy for many, many years --- requested we post Stewart's latest take over this Memorial Day weekend. We are all too happy to do so. It is, quite literally, the very least we can do to say thanks to Tom and all the others vets who have given far more for their country than it will ever be able to return in kind.

As Courbat writes us about Stewart's take (posted below): "Nothing, nothing I have EVER seen summarized as well how our country has managed to screw over our vets, going all the way back to our war for independence from England! You will be blown away by what you learn --- and this MUST be shown for the Memorial Day."

And so it shall be. Both parts of Stewart's epic takedown from Thursday night's show follow below. If you only have time for one of the two parts, let it be PART 2...

We noted this very point in our initial coverage of the phony "IRS is targeting conservatives!!!" scam last year, just after the White House had (pathetically) fallen for it as well. (See here, then here, then here.)

While one might be excused for buying in to the scam in the first five minutes, 24 hours after it broke everyone should have known it was a scam. Nonetheless, the GOP, without having any legitimate basis for still being in business, has been making a career out of pretend scandals, including the one that "Obama is using the IRS to destroy Tea Party conservatives!!!" Their stupid base is dumb enough to believe them.

At this point, the Republican Party is no longer a political party. It's a permanent campaign organization with little more than self-victimization as their central platform.

For the record, as we've discussed many times, the problem is not the IRS giving too much scrutiny to political groups (aligned with either party) masquerading as "social welfare organizations", it's the fact that they are allowing such groups to continue the masquerade, despite the very clear statutory prohibition on any political activity by such groups.

Jon Stewart and The Daily Show's fantastic --- MUST-WATCH (just for the crying clips!) --- take on the outrageously absurd and demeaning media-enforced double-standard faced by female politicians over their male counterparts...

Democrats lead Republicans by 6 percentage points on a generic ballot test going into the midterm elections in November, according to a new poll.

A Marist-McClatchy poll released Tuesday found 48 percent of registered voters would choose a Democrat if the congressional elections were held today. Another 42 percent said they would support a Republican candidate. Six percent said they're undecided.

The last time the polling firm tested the question, in February, Democrats held only a 2-point lead. Other recent polling has shown a narrow edge for Democrats. The Real Clear Politics average has Democrats topping Republicans by about 2 percent as well.